Why Bloomberg News didn’t cover Bloomberg’s return

Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times writes Monday about why Bloomberg News did not cover the announcement last week that Michael Bloomberg was returning as CEO of the parent company.

Somaiya writes, “Bloomberg’s policy is unusual, said Ann Marie Lipinski, a former editor of The Chicago Tribune and the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Covering one’s own publication ‘has certainly become a convention and I think you have to articulate a pretty convincing reason to not do it,’ she said. ‘To retreat on a newsworthy story in deference to your owners is bad policy.’ Though it is difficult, she said, and certainly not a popular task among reporters and editors, it can be done well.

“All of Bloomberg’s chief competitors cover themselves. Last week, USA Today reported on its own layoffs and The Washington Post reported on its publisher being replaced. In May 2013, The Associated Press covered the news of its phone records being seized by the Justice Department. The Wall Street Journal covered the phone hacking scandal that ensnared its owner, Rupert Murdoch. The Financial Times and Reuters both report on their publicly traded parent companies. And The Times covered the dismissal of its former executive editor Jill Abramson this year.

“Steve Coll, dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a staff writer at The New Yorker, said, ‘I think you have to concede that covering yourself is awkward, and that readers understandably wonder whether you bring the same credibility to covering yourself as you bring to others.’ But, he said, ‘as a reader I prefer an honest try even if I find it flawed.'”

Read more here.